Title page
Copyright page
Prologue: The Beauty of Names
Acknowledgments
Note on the Images
1 Hitler and the Fledermaus
2 How Species Get Their Names
3 Words, Proper Names, Individuals
4 Types and the Materiality of Names
5 The Curio Collection of Animal Names
6 “I Shall Name This Beetle After My Beloved Wife …”
7 “A New Species a Day”
8 Who Counts the Species, Names the Names?
9 Naming Nothing
Epilogue: On Labeling
References
Index of Author Names

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1 One of several types of specimens of the Usambara three-horned chameleon (Chamaeleon deremensis, today part of the genus Trioceros), described in 1896 by Georg Friedrich Paul Matschie, then curator of the mammal collection. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 1.2 North American Insectivora. Four shrew species and the shrew mole (bottom) in an engraving from 1859. Baird, S. F., Mammals of North America, Plate XXVIII (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859). Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 1.3 The pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus, LeConte, 1856) and the California leaf-nosed bat (Macrotus californicus, Baird, 1858) in an engraving from 1859. Baird, S. F., Mammals of North America, Plate LXI. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859). Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 1.4 Hermann Pohle with his assistant Inge Pasemann in front of a cabinet with genet skulls in 1939. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Historische Bild- u. Schriftgutsammlungen (MfN, HBSB), Bestand: Zool. Mus., Signatur: B III/1260.
Figure 1.5 Eggs of the brown-hooded gull (Larus maculipennis, Lichtenstein, 1823, today in the genus Chroicocephalus) and other gull species. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 1.6 Bernhard Grzimek with a living cheetah during the German television show “Ein Platz für Tiere” in 1977. Courtesy of Hessischer Rundfunk/Pressestelle/Kurt Bethke.
Figure 1.7 A little red flying fox (Pteropus scapulatus, Peters, 1862) in a plastic bag in the mammal collection. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 1.8 Mandible fragment of a fossil woolly mammoth. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 2.1 Armand David in Mandarin dress. Courtesy of St. Vincent DePaul Image Archive, reproduced by John Rybold.
Figure 2.2 The first natural image of a giant panda based on the furs, skulls, and skeletons sent by David to Paris. Milne Edwards, H., Recherches pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des mammifères (Paris: G. Masson, 1868–1874). Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 2.3 Carl Linnaeus in an oil painting by Alexander Roslin, 1775. National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm, Sweden. Accession number NMGrh 1053. Transferred from Gripsholm Castle, 1866. Nationalmuseum press photo.
Figure 2.4 The title page of the tenth edition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae from 1758. Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 2.5 The tip of an upside-down “elephant ear” sponge with one of Walther Arndt’s handwritten labels. Arndt described this species in 1943 as Spongia thienemanni, which is now considered a junior synonym of Spongia agaricina Pallas, 1766. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 2.6 The title page of the fourth edition of the “International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.” Courtesy of the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, Thomas Pape. Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 2.7 A starfish specimen (Paulia horrida Gray, 1840). Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 3.1 The type specimen of Scomber minutus, a species of toothpony described in 1795 by Marcus Élieser Bloch, which today belongs to the genus Gazza. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 3.2 Roy Chapman Andrews in the Mongolian desert during one of his expeditions. Courtesy of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, image #411083.
Figure 3.3 A furious Segnosaurus mother is chasing an Oviraptor with a stolen egg from her nest. Postal stamp from Azerbaijan. Personal library M. Ohl.
Figure 3.4 According to the authors of the publication titled “A nesting dinosaur,” this image shows a nest-caring Oviraptor mother “shortly before death.” Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: NATURE (vol. 379, Norell, M. A., Clark, J. M., Chiappe, L. M. Dashzeveg, D. A nesting dinosaur), copyright 1995.
Figure 3.5 Orthetrum nitidinerve (Selys Longchamps, 1841), a dragonfly species from the zoological collection of Count Johann Centurius von Hoffmannsegg. This collection, together with the Royal Kunstkammer collection, provided the basis for the Zoological Museum’s founding in Berlin in 1810. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 3.6 Boxes containing paraffin blocks with reproductive organs of monotremes (platypus and echidnas) and marsupials (kangaroos, possums, and related) for histological sectioning. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 4.1 Judith Basin, Montana Territory, as surveyed in 1875. One year later, Cope’s expedition pitched camp in the vicinity of the confluence of the Judith and Missouri rivers, near the spot labeled “Ft. Claggett” on the map. N. Peters, “Judith Basin: Drawn under the direction of Capt. W. Ludlow Corps of Engineers,” from William Ludlow, Report of a Reconnaissance From Carroll, Montana Territory, on the Upper Missouri, to the Yellowstone National Park, and Return Made in the Summer of 1875 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1876). Image courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection, http://www.davidrumsey.com.
Figure 4.2 The late Edward Drinker Cope. From the Collections of the University of Pennsylvania Archives, Digital Image Number: UARC20041111003.
Figure 4.3 The late Othniel Charles Marsh. Courtesy of the Library of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, image #37641.
Figure 4.4 Cope’s incorrect reconstruction of Elasmosaurus platyurus, with the head mistakenly mounted on the actual tale. Cope, E. D., Synopsis of the extinct Batrachia and Reptilia of North America. Part I. Tafel II, Fig. 1 (Philadelphia: McCalla and Stavely, 1869). Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
Figure 4.5 A drawing by Cope with two incorrectly reconstructed Elasmosaurus in the lower foreground and the right background. Cope, E. D., The fossil reptiles of New Jersey, The American Naturalist 3: 84–91, 1869. Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 4.6 The skull of Edward Drinker Cope. Courtesy of Penn Museum, image #298584.
Figure 4.7 An insect drawer containing damselflies of the genus Calopteryx, but here still bearing the older name Agrion. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 4.8 The type specimen of Archaeopteryx siemensii Dames, 1897, known as the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, C. Radke photo.
Figure 4.9 The holotype of Stromateus niger, a fish species described by Marcus Élieser Bloch in 1795. Today, the species belongs to the genus Parastromateus. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 5.1 A bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) specimen prepared by Benedykt Dybowski with the label he handwrote in Siberia in 1873. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 5.2 The late Benedykt Dybowski. Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archive), Poland. Signature 1-N-146.
Figure 5.3 Color plate of gammarids from Lake Baikal in one of Dybowski’s major monographs. Dybowski, B., Beiträge zur näheren Kenntnis der in dem Baikalsee vorkommenden niederen Krebse aus der Gruppe der Gammariden. Horae Soc. Ent. Rossica 10, Beiheft (1874). Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 5.4 The type specimen of Papuogryllacris adoxa Karny, 1928, with the genus and species labels typical of the Berlin collections. The new label with the QR code was added as part of the digitization of the locust collection. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 6.1 Part of the skeletonized holotype of Serranus goliath Peters, 1855. The name is a synonym of Epinephelus lanceolatus (Bloch, 1790), the giant grouper native to the Indo-Pacific region. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 6.2 The late Thomas Henry Huxley. Courtesy of Wellcome Library, image #12958i.
Figure 6.3 Ernst Haeckel in 1908. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Historische Bild- u. Schriftgutsammlungen (MfN, HBSB) Bestand: Zool. Mus., Signatur: B I/60.
Figure 6.4 A plate depicting the gelatinous Bathybius haeckelii Huxley, 1868, and the coccoliths. Haeckel, E., Beiträge zur Plastidentheorie, Jena. Z Med Naturw. 5, Tafel XVII (1870). Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
Figure 6.5 Haeckel’s “Genealogical Tree of Humans” from 1874, showing the linear development from the monera at the base of the tree to all other animals and ultimately to humans (Menschen) at the top of the tree. Haeckel, E., Anthropogenie; oder, Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschen (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1874). Library of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin.
Figure 6.6 Portrait of the huntsman spider Heteropoda davidbowie, Jäger, 2008. Courtesy of Mattes Linde.
Figure 6.7 A wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans Linnaeus, 1758) egg, labeled in pencil. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 6.8 A specimen of the carabid beetle Agra schwarzeneggeri Erwin, 2002, with its biceps-like middle femora. Courtesy of Karolyn Darrow, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Figure 6.9 An adult male of Orsonwelles malus Hormiga, 2002, from Kauai. Gustavo Hormiga photo.
Figure 6.10 The darter Etheostoma obama Mayden and Layman, 2012. Drawing by Joseph R. Tomelleri (www.americanfishes.com). Copyright by Joseph R. Tomelleri.
Figure 6.11 A male specimen of Damocles serratus Lund, 1986. Carnegie Museum (Natural History), Pittsburgh PA, #CM 35473. Courtesy of Richard Lund and Eileen D. Grogan.
Figure 6.12 The Hercules beetle, Dynastes hercules (Linnaeus, 1758), here a specimen of the subspecies Dynastes hercules ecuatorianus Ohaus, 1913, from Peru. Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de la ville de Toulouse, Didier Descouens photo.
Figure 6.13 A male of Shireplitis frodoi Fernández-Triana and Ward, 2013. Courtesy of José L. Fernández-Triana.
Figure 6.14 The holotype specimen for Mosasaurus copeanus Marsh, 1869 (YPM VP 000312). Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, Yale University (http://peabody.yale.edu).
Figure 7.1 Alfred Russell Wallace. Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut, Müncheberg, Historisches Archiv, Porträtsammlung, image #4358.
Figure 7.2 A stamped label attached to a dried specimen of Crocodylus moreletii, known as Morelet’s crocodile. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 7.3 A small part of the crane fly collection with labels created at different times. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 8.1 Boxes containing brachiopod (Brachiopoda) shells. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 8.2 Walther Arndt in 1940. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Historische Bild- u. Schriftgutsammlungen (MfN, HBSB) Bestand: GNF, Signatur: FM X,1.
Figure 8.3 A glass slide preparation of the feline tapeworm, known today as Hydatigera taeniaeformis. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 8.4 One of the type specimens of the brown titi monkey, Callicebus brunneus (Wagner, 1842), originally described in the genus Callithrix. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 9.1 Alexandre Arsène Girault. Courtesy of the National Archives, image #7-H-15-H79.
Figure 9.2 Mounting stands for preserved birds displaying historical labels with the species name, synonyms, geographical origins, and the collector’s name. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.
Figure 9.3 The snouter, or rhinograde, Tyrannonasus imperator. Harald Stümpke, Bau und Leben der Rhinogradentia, Tafel XI (München: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, 2006). Courtesy of Springer Nature.
Figure 9.4 The “Flooer” (Florifacies mirabilis), a ground-living bat, which imitates a flower to attract insects. Dixon, D., After Man: A Zoology of the Future (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981). Courtesy of Dougal Dixon.
Figure 9.5 Photograph taken with a strobe flash in Loch Ness on June 20, 1975, showing the head and neck, 7 to 12 feet in length, of Nessiteras rhombopteryx. According to the authors, adjacent frames, taken 1 minute before and after, show nothing. Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: NATURE (vol. 258, Scott, P., Rines, R., Naming the Loch Ness Monster), copyright (1975).
Figure 9.6 A jumble of old labels from the mammal collection. Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, M. Ohl photo.

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